Importing, Exporting, and Referencing

There are two ways to bring files and geometry into a Maya scene: importing and referencing. When you import a file into Maya, you are permanently merging the file into the current scene. This is recommended if you’re working with just one file.

Often, you’ll want to use the same model in multiple scenes (Figure 1.54). You can use referencing to bring the same file into multiple scenes simultaneously. Referencing gives you a chance to edit the original file and have those revisions updated in all the scene files that use the reference. For instance, you can create a character in one file and then reference it into different files for each camera shot. If you later want to make changes to the character, you can open the original character file and make the changes, then save the file. The updates are automatically made to all files that reference the character (Figure 1.55).